“Does psychoanalysis cure of transference?” – Éric Laurent (2011)

“I opposed two conceptions about the destiny of transference during the course of an analysis. One version of the end of psychoanalysis according to which transference would be then finally reduced to zero. Lacan’s teaching goes against it. At the end of the experience, the transference to psychoanalysis remains, however it has radically changed. This is what Lacan called “a more dignified love”. It requires a new reading of the love addressed to the “father”. For Lacan, the way out of a psychoanalysis is not a return to a previous state, but rather a sort of sublimation of transference, a passage from the work of transference to the transference work. The Durcharbeitung of the transference in the experience leads to a work transference with psychoanalysis itself, as such, without the support of the analyst.

(…)

Transference reduced to zero could be thought of for some time as the belief according to which it was enough to traverse the screen of the ideals in order to be delivered from love. What remains, at the end of an analysis, and which must be received in its particularity -this is what the pass is for- is the knowledge of the subject about the partner who has a chance to respond.”